Staten Island and Brooklyn need Mike McMahon in Congress

"Not until we return dignity and respect to our workplace will our nation ever live up to the great ideals upon which it was founded." - Mike McMahon

->Click the image to the right for large printable card you can take with you when you vote

What can I say, we had many years of Republican Vito Fosella as our Congressman, and while there were a few items I agreed upon with him, for the most part he didn't see the same picture as me. He ignored my stance on media consolidation, stating in a mass generated e-mail that if corporations owned more TV, radio and newspapers, it would be better for all of us. He also did not respond to my offer to do anything in my power to help keep my local hospital, Victory Memorial, open. So I was a bit discouraged, but that was then, this is a new day.

First let me explain a bit about my Congressional district

My district, the 13th. Congressional district of New York, which encompasses all of Staten Island and the southern part of Brooklyn, has the highest density of any Congressional district in the entire United States, with over 92,000 union households. For too long we had a person in office at the Congressional level that didn't quite understand what difficulties workers face on a daily basis. Now we have a chance to elect someone who knows who his neighbors are, so here's what Mr. McMahon has to say about labor, in excerpt:

My neighbors and friends in both Staten Island and Brooklyn leave their homes and families early each morning to put in a hard day’s work, helping our City function and supporting their families. As a child I learned from them the values that continue to guide me today – the honor of hard work, the importance of family, and the power that we have when we stand together.

The great American ideals of justice and fairness demand that we treat each and every hard working man and woman - from fire fighters to teachers, from police office officers to sanitation workers, from construction workers to nurses, and so many other important but often overlooked jobs -, with dignity and respect. First and foremost this means a fair wage for a fair days work, appropriate benefits so that they and their family have health care access, financial security, and time off to spend as a family.

Employee Free Choice Act:

Sadly the fight for dignity and respect on the job has never been more difficult then today. Far too often, when workers courageously stand up and demand union representation , unscrupulous employers respond with illegal threats and intimidation. Firing workers, changing shift times, and even threatening to close places of work are becoming all the more common in union organizing campaigns. The nation’s foremost enforcer of labor law, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), is simply ill-equipped and unable to decide these cases in a timely fashion. This means that even when illegal acts are found, the ruling often comes years after workers have been intimidated from voting for union representation, and the atmosphere for union organizing has been poisoned beyond the point when a free and fair election is possible. This, clearly, is not what was envisioned by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt when he and Congress enacted the National Labor Relations Act over 70 years ago. As Americans, we must stand together to say that this type of harassment is unacceptable anywhere in the world, let alone in our nation’s own work places.

It is for these reasons that I strongly and proudly support the Employee Free Choice Act. This vital legislation will return the decision about union representation to the rightful decision makers – the workers. Once this most important piece of legislation is enacted into law, workers will be able to declare their desire for union representation through the signing of union authorization cards. The union will be able to hold those cards until a majority have been signed, at which time they will be submitted to the NLRB. No longer will employers be able to hire union busting law firms that employ vicious campaigns of threat and intimidation in preparation for a union election date. No longer will workers’ votes be cast under the watchful eye of their employer. The Employee Free Choice Act will finally begin to return democracy and fairness to our nation’s workplaces.

I am proud to have stood with the hardworking men and women of my City to protect their jobs and living conditions. When the sons and daughters of our City were called up to active military duty and temporarily forced to leave their families and municipal jobs to proudly serve our country in the War on Terror, I fought to make sure that the housing and food compensation that they received with their deployment was not subtracted from their City pay checks. Before I and my colleagues on the City Council demanded this change in City policy, City employees that were called up to active duty were required to return to the City the lesser of their City salary or their military compensation, including the cost of housing and food.

Just as I successfully fought in 2003 to save nearly two hundred good paying Teamster jobs at the City’s Department of Sanitation, I will fight with equal vigor for:

• Labor and Environmental Standards in all International Trade Agreements. Our country needs fair trade that raises the wages and standards of all workers, not trade that makes it free for employers to export jobs and exploit workers.
• Increased funding for the Occupational Safety & Health Administration and other Similar Federal Agencies. Federal agencies charged with enforcement of our nation’s labor laws need to be sufficiently resourced and empowered to do their jobs. Needless and senseless workplace accidents must be stopped before they happen, and when they do, employers that are at fault must be held accountable for their actions. In this day and age workers should not be dying on our construction sites -as has tragically been the recent case in New York City - or in our nation’s mines. We have the technology and ability to do this work safely and we owe it to the hard working men and women of our nation and their families to ensure their safety.
• Increasing the National Minimum Wage. The legal minimum wage needs to be raised further and we must ensure that all levels of government are vigorously enforcing the law and prosecuting those who violate it. Men and woman should be paid equal and fair wages for a fair days work, and in order to support their families these wages must keep pace with inflation and the rising cost of living.
• Ensuring that all Government Funded Projects Pay a Prevailing Wage for All Construction Work. If there is a single dollar of federal funding in a development project, all construction should be done at the prevailing wage rate. The practice of segregating Federal and local government funding and structuring the project to minimize the work done at a prevailing rate, as is far too often the case in New York City, simply must come to an end. As a member of the New York City Council I fought to end this practice by introducing legislation, Introduction 733, requiring that all City subsidized projects, whether directly or indirectly funded, pay a prevailing wage rate. I will continue this fight once elected to the United States Congress.

Not until we return dignity and respect to our workplace will our nation ever live up to the great ideals upon which it was founded. I will work hand and hand with my partners in organized labor in the fight for economic justice both here at home and abroad.

Every single labor union in the New York City area is endorsing Mike McMahon, his stance on our returning veterans and infrastructure are also top notch, and from some friends and colleagues of mine, he is the real deal. Mike McMahon can also be voted under the Working Families Party, Line E.

More info on Mike McMahon can be found on Mike McMahon For Congress
More info on who Working Families supports and their issues can be found at WFP.org

Martial Law! Wow, didn't notice this.

Previous to the passing of the heist on the American people, I mean the bailout legislation.

Image of the day :(

And now Congress goes on Vacation, um, Recess

Tula Connell from AFL-CIO Now blog: No Blank Check on Bailout!

This is directly from Tula Connell's DailyKos story:

Congress: No Blank Check on Bailout!

Only a few months ago, the Bush administration repeatedly bashed attempts by Congress to expand health insurance coverage to an additional 4 million children, saying the $35 billion involved was too much to spend.

But now Bush is rushing to ram through a $700 billion corporate bailout—new estimates put the figure at up to $1.8 trillion—for companies whose greed outpaced their brains and plunged our nation into a financial debacle. (Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz concisely calls the disaster “the fruit of hypocrisy.”) The U.S. public isn’t buying it. Only 28 percent support the bailout plan as proposed.

The bailout legislation that U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson is insisting Congress pass immediately with no changes would give unprecedented power to a single political appointee: Paulson.

It’s not bad enough that Paulson, the former Goldman Sachs chief, wants America’s taxpayers to buy millions of worthless bonds from U.S.-based companies—with no penalties and no oversight for the corporations responsible for this mess. He wants to load us with the same junk debt from foreign corporations—overseas corporations like UBS, which just so happens to employ Phil Gramm, economic guru for Sen. John McCain.

As Attaturk writes on Firedoglake today:

Phil Gramm, of course, is the architect of McCain’s response to the housing mortgage crisis (laughable as it was) this spring; he may still be his Treasury Secretary nominee. He is also vice chairman of UBS’s U.S. division and a lobbyist for UBS.

Under the Bush administration and its McCain clone, it’s not surprising that Gramm would get bailed out. Because while he was in the Senate, Gramm introduced a bill to deregulate the financial industry, creating the monolithic commercial-investment banks that now are going under—and that are asking for us taxpayers to bail them out. Oh, and McCain was among the senators joining Gramm in pushing the bill to deregulate.

Surely, McCain now must regret his actions?

Nope. As Attaturk notes, this exchange took place just yesterday:

Q: In 1999, you were one of the senators who helped pass deregulation of Wall Street. Do you regret that now?

McCAIN: No. I think the deregulation was probably helpful to the growth of our economy.

With 84 lobbyists from Wall Street on his campaign, McCain is so embedded in creating this crisis, he was still saying just last week that the fundamentals of the nation’s economy were strong.

The AFL-CIO is urging Congress to step back, take a deep breath, and not pass the Paulson bailout plan as it is written. Take the time to get it right—and don’t give Bush a blank check. Such a plan must not be overseen by one political appointee, but by independent actors who are looking out for the public interest—not corporate bedfellows.

In a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), AFL-CIO President John Sweeney urges that any bailout contain a stringent set of conditions:

• A moratorium on home foreclosures that gives homeowners a chance to restructure their loans.
• An economic recovery and jobs package, including extended unemployment benefits, fiscal relief for state and local governments and a major investment in our nation’s crumbling infrastructure.
• An immediate strengthening of current financial regulations and a commitment to further regulate our financial institutions to protect the public’s money when it is give to private companies.
• Strong public oversight and transparency at the agency created to oversee the expenditure of billions of dollars of taxpayer money to rescue private companies.

As Ian Welsh points out on Firedoglake, the Paulson bailout means the banks bailed out don’t have to change how they do business. In 2007, Wall Street paid itself bonuses equal to the raises of 80 million Americans, but we’re expected to pay $2,324 dollars each (every man, woman and child) to bail them out. And that’s only if the bailout stops at $700 billion.

As written now, the Paulson bailout plan is totally unacceptable, as it contains no independent oversight or reasonable conditions on the use of taxpayers’ money. It is summed up well by both journalist William Greider and writer Richard Behan.

Greider calls it an historic swindle.

Behan, comparing Bush’s rush to pass the bailout with the Bush administration’s rush to the Iraq war, sums it up as “The $700 Billion Bailout: One More Weapon of Mass Deception.”

Video: Massive corporations against The Employee Free Choice Act

The who, what, where, when, how and why, of the forces against the American worker.

Wow, everything I speak about, and even more, this fantastic video that explains better than I can, about the opponents of The Employee Free Choice Act, and a bit of history in the process.



A huge thanks to NoahKunin at The Uptake for posting this video

You can read more about Myth Vs. Fact about the Employee Free Choice Act at The US House Of Representative's Committee Of Labor and Education "Employee Free Choice Act: Myth vs. Fact "

LIUNA urges you to sign on to "Build America so America works"

From LIUNA, the Laborers International Union Of North America, comes a petition to Congress urging investment in the infrastructure of the United States, to save money in the long run, create good jobs and help to create a better tomorrow for generations to come.


From The LIUNA Action Network:

The United States is the nation that has achieved the most advanced engineering pursuits to benefit its people and the world. We are the first to put a man on the moon, to build a super-highway system, to create unrivaled air and rail transportation, and first-class public spaces, such as schools. But today, we can no longer be assured of crossing the Mississippi River safely, of protecting families from failing dams or levees or of providing a transportation system that works.

* Americans spend 3.5 billion hours a year stuck in traffic on our highways, which due to years of neglect now require $94 billion a year in maintenance and improvement costs alone - more than double what is currently allocated, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers. If we maintain and upgrade our highway system, we can save significantly and get to work or pick up our children on time.

* At least 31 percent of our country's bridges are structurally deficient leading to tragedies such as the I-35W bridge collapse in Minneapolis. We can prevent these kinds of tragedies by repairing our bridges.

* Approximately $30 billion is needed to renovate, repair and build new classrooms in our public schools. We can invest in future generations by taking care of our schools.

* Across America there are 3,500 unsafe dams and 50 percent of waterway locks are functionally obsolete leading to deadly breaches such as what occurred in New Orleans. We have identified problems and we have the ability to fix them so that natural disasters aren?t exacerbated.

* Upgrades to the nation's electric transmission system are occurring at only a third of the rate of increased demand, according to the Consumer Energy Council of America. To increase domestic energy production by 30 percent, we can invest in traditional energy sources and biofuel refineries, wind turbines, ethanol production and clean coal technologies.

* Demand for railway shipping is expected to increase 50 percent in the next 12 years, far outstripping our nation's current rail capacity and threatening to divert rail shipping to our already congested highway system. We can free our highways by rebuilding our railways.

For the sake of America's competitive place in the world, for our economy and good jobs, in order to reverse the downward slide in our lifestyles and as an investment for future generations, I want to add my voice to that of the half-million working men and women of the Laborers' International Union of North America in urging Congress to make building America a national priority and redirect our nation's resources to doing so.

You can get involved and let your voice be heard by going to the site and getting E-Active, just click the image below to get started

New GI Bill passes, opens paths to educational resources and future employment for our returning veterans

I first brought this campaign to Joe's Union Review in Feburary 08, with the story "E-Activism can help our returning vets to become workers, not homeless. Help fix the insufficient GI Bill."

Thank you everyone who has signed petitions along the way, I felt it was of utmost importance that our returning vets had a good chance towards a career when they come home, together people such as yourselves from many different blogs and sites got active and we were heard. Even when such high ranking people such as Senator John McCain staunchly opposing the measure and a Geroge W. Bush threatened veto against it, the American people have spoken.

With tremendous support and overwhelming passage in both Congress(256-166) and the Senate (75-22 McCain was a no show) and a reversal of the veto threat by the President, our returning vets now have a fighting chance

Dear Joseph, Today, history was made. Just this morning, President Bush signed the new GI Bill into law. Since we are only a few days away from celebrating the 4th of July, this milestone is a fitting way to honor our veterans who have bravely served this nation. IAVA has led the fight for the new GI Bill from the beginning, and your dedication over the past year and a half ensured that our lawmakers kept it a top priority. Over 20,000 of you called your representatives in Congress, spread the word in your communities and signed the petition at www.GIBill2008.org. Thanks to your hard work, we finally achieved our goal. Generations of veterans to come will benefit from this bill. Your support in this fight has been overwhelming- very few bills in recent history have received such an outpouring of public support. Together, we can be extremely proud of this victory. In a few days, we'll let you know more about this remarkable bill and how IAVA plans to help veterans take full advantage of these new benefits. Thank you for standing with IAVA throughout this fight. Sincerely, Paul Rieckhoff Iraq Veteran Executive Director Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America

Job resources for returning Vets at Joe's

Task Force on the Underground Economy and Misclassification at a Field Hearing Conducted by Senator John Kerry

Sara Stafford, a Saugus construction business owner shared her personal experience of being underbid by a contractor using misclassified workers and illegals.

Pictured from left: Francis Callahan, Jr. of the MA Building Trades Council, Mark Erlich of the New England Regional Council of Carpenters, George Noel of the state Dept. of Labor and Assistant Attorney General Jennifer Stark.

Submitted by Charles Lezette on May 30, 2008 - 11:22am.

MASSACHUSETTS --

On Mon., April 28, George Noel, Director of the Massachusetts Department of Labor [pdf] and Assistant Attorney General Jennifer Stark [pdf] gave testimony and a progress report on the state's new Joint Enforcement Task Force on the Underground Economy and Employee Misclassification at a field hearing conducted by US Senator John Kerry in Chelsea.
"Cheaters and unscrupulous employers have created an underground economy as big as $1 trillion. Worse, workers right here in Massachusetts are being taken advantage of and not getting the benefits and protections they deserve," said Kerry.

Participating in the hearing with Kerry was US Congressman John Tierney (D-Salem), co-author of the Taxpayer Responsibility, Accountability and Consistency (TRAC) Act, which seeks to discourage employers from misclassifying workers by allowing the IRS to collect the unpaid taxes from the employer. In addition, the bill would increase fines for misclassifications. Frank Callahan, President of the Massachusetts Building Trades Council [pdf] gave testimony in support of TRAC.

"This is a problem that is severe and is getting worse," said Mark Erlich, Executive Secretary-Treasurer of the UBC's New England Regional Council [pdf] who testified on the negative effects of misclassification. Erlich added that it was encouraging to finally see the problem getting greater public visibility.

Business owners also attended the hearing. Sara Stafford, a Saugus construction business owner shared her personal experience of being underbid by a contractor using misclassified workers and illegals. Scott Morrisey of Red Line Wall Systems, Inc. gave this overview [pdf].
Ask your US Representative to support H.R. 5804, the Taxpayer Responsibility, Accountability, and Consistency Act.

Charles Lazette is a contributer/Administrator of Union Review and a politically active member of UBC local 370 in upstate New York, he also runs his website UBCNewsroom, go check it out and keep up to date with the latest misclassification headlines in the US and other news that affects workers in the area

Task Force on the Underground Economy and Misclassification at a Field Hearing Conducted by Senator John Kerry

Sara Stafford, a Saugus construction business owner shared her personal experience of being underbid by a contractor using misclassified workers and illegals.

Pictured from left: Francis Callahan, Jr. of the MA Building Trades Council, Mark Erlich of the New England Regional Council of Carpenters, George Noel of the state Dept. of Labor and Assistant Attorney General Jennifer Stark.

Submitted by Charles Lezette on May 30, 2008 - 11:22am.

MASSACHUSETTS --

On Mon., April 28, George Noel, Director of the Massachusetts Department of Labor [pdf] and Assistant Attorney General Jennifer Stark [pdf] gave testimony and a progress report on the state's new Joint Enforcement Task Force on the Underground Economy and Employee Misclassification at a field hearing conducted by US Senator John Kerry in Chelsea.
"Cheaters and unscrupulous employers have created an underground economy as big as $1 trillion. Worse, workers right here in Massachusetts are being taken advantage of and not getting the benefits and protections they deserve," said Kerry.

Participating in the hearing with Kerry was US Congressman John Tierney (D-Salem), co-author of the Taxpayer Responsibility, Accountability and Consistency (TRAC) Act, which seeks to discourage employers from misclassifying workers by allowing the IRS to collect the unpaid taxes from the employer. In addition, the bill would increase fines for misclassifications. Frank Callahan, President of the Massachusetts Building Trades Council [pdf] gave testimony in support of TRAC.

"This is a problem that is severe and is getting worse," said Mark Erlich, Executive Secretary-Treasurer of the UBC's New England Regional Council [pdf] who testified on the negative effects of misclassification. Erlich added that it was encouraging to finally see the problem getting greater public visibility.

Business owners also attended the hearing. Sara Stafford, a Saugus construction business owner shared her personal experience of being underbid by a contractor using misclassified workers and illegals. Scott Morrisey of Red Line Wall Systems, Inc. gave this overview [pdf].
Ask your US Representative to support H.R. 5804, the Taxpayer Responsibility, Accountability, and Consistency Act.

Charles Lazette is a contributer/Administrator of Union Review and a politically active member of UBC local 370 in upstate New York, he also runs his website UBCNewsroom, go check it out and keep up to date with the latest misclassification headlines in the US and other news that affects workers in the area

LIUNA "pigs" protest welfare to corporate homebuilders hidden in US Senates approved Foreclosure Prevention Act

The U.S. Senate has passed a version of the Foreclosure Prevention Act, the majority of which goes to pay for taxpayer handouts to corporate home builders, not to help struggling homeowners - LIUNA Newswire



I say, if you make a decision that will effect you for 30 years of your life, you should think it through, if you bought a house you couldn't afford, get an apartment, nobody twisted your ARM.

That being stated, I continue that, if you make a bad business decision, and you lose solvency, you should go out of business, case closed.

While it was introduced as a well meaning plan to help people keep their houses, it seems that the Senate version of the Foreclosure Prevention Act is tainted with it's fair share of pork, here's the scoop:

I stayed at the Capitol Hilton in DC this weekend to help give a seminar on E-Activism and Blogging, little did I know that just a few days before there were a group of lobbyists staying at the exact same place. Their mission was to seduce members of Congress into passing the "Foreclosure Prevention Act", which in it's little known areas will give up to 32 BILLION US DOLLARS in tax breaks, to the corporations who helped get us into this mess in the first place.

How? By letting these corporate homebuilders claim MILLIONS in tax refunds by charging their current losses against the huge profits they made 3 or 4 years ago.

They didn't mind building out of control when people were sucking up ARM mortgages like grapes. Now that the bubble has burst, they want to slide on their tax burden. According to LIUNA "The U.S. Senate has passed a version of the Foreclosure Prevention Act, the majority of which goes to pay for taxpayer handouts to corporate home builders, not to help struggling homeowners." Unfuckingreal, I'm pissed!

I wonder what would happen if you and I tried to claim this years losses against the gains we had in the last 4 years.

According to the *Metro Washington Council News, AFL-CIO (5/1/08):

"PIGGY" HOMEBUILDERS TARGETED IN FORECLOSURE BAILOUT PROTEST:Big pink chanting pigs rallied outside the Washington Hilton Hotel early Wednesday morning to protest billions in handouts to corporate homebuilders. Serenaded with chants of "corporate welfare on the rise, a bunch of pigs in disguise" and "off to the trough," representatives of the homebuilders industry boarded shuttle buses outside the Hilton to lobby Congress for passage of the Foreclosure Prevention Act. The Act - currently before the House - would provide billions in bailout to the homebuilder industry while giving little relief to homeowners, according to the Laborers International Union of North America (LIUNA), which coordinated the demonstration. "This bailout failed to pass the worker smell test," said Laborers President Terrence O’Sullivan. "We are stepping up our efforts to make sure Congress knows this bailout is unacceptable."

NY Times (4/16/08): Big Tax Breaks for Businesses in Housing Bill

The tax provisions of the Foreclosure Prevention Act, which consumer groups and labor leaders say amount to government handouts to big business, show how the credit crisis, while rattling the housing and financial markets, has created beneficiaries in the power corridors of Washington.

It also shows how legislation with a populist imperative offers a chance for lobbyists to press their clients’ interests.

This has proved especially true on the housing legislation, which many lawmakers and lobbyists view as one of the last opportunities before Congress grinds to a halt amid election-year politics.

In the Senate bill, the nation’s biggest home builders, some now on the verge of bankruptcy, won a provision that would let them claim millions in tax refunds by charging their current losses against the huge profits they made three or four years ago. Other struggling industries would benefit from this provision.

“This is our biggest legislative effort since the Tax Reform Act of 1986,” said Jerry M. Howard, chief executive of the National Association of Home Builders. Hundreds of the association’s members flooded the district offices of representatives and senators while they were home for the spring recess last month.

LIUNA Newswire (4/29/08) :

Through their subprime and high-risk mortgage lending subsidiaries, corporate home builders helped create the current crisis which has contributed to the loss of 359,000 construction jobs since 2007. The actions of corporate homebuilders have also contributed to as many as 3 million Americans facing foreclosure and the loss of nearly $1 trillion in investment value, weakening workers' retirement security.

The U.S. Senate has passed a version of the Foreclosure Prevention Act, the majority of which goes to pay for taxpayer handouts to corporate home builders, not to help struggling homeowners. The House of Representatives will soon take up the legislation. In print and online ads launching Wednesday, LIUNA appeals to the House to make the Foreclosure Prevention Act live up to its name. The NAHB, which had threatened to cut off political contributions if it does not get the legislation, is expected to lobby the House Wednesday for the tax breaks. LIUNA and others will demonstrate with 'pigs at the trough,' as the union has done in several cities to protest the proposed corporate homebuilder handout.

LIUNA is fighting for a solution to the crisis which helps to restore jobs, stabilize the housing market, return shareholder value to home builders and work with home builders to create a sustainable model for a healthy industry.

*You can sign up for the newsletter here-> DCLabor

More H1b Visa abuse news: DOJ penalizes company for excluding US workers in favor of H1b Visa holders

"Only H-1s apply, and should be willing to transfer H-1B." - Job advertisement

I have been covering this for a while, and have seen a video by attorneys who teach companies how to disqualify American workers. It's hardly ever mentioned, but it's happening all over the country.

From ComputerWorld (3/2/08) :

DOJ settles H-1B job ad case for $45,000

A Pittsburgh-based computer consulting company that advertised for H-1B visa holders only is paying $45,000 in civil penalties to settle allegations that it discriminated against U.S. citizens, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) said Thursday.

The company, iGate Mastech Inc., placed 30 job announcements between May and June of 2006 "for computer programmers that expressly favored H-1B visa holders to the exclusion of U.S. citizens, lawful permanent residents and other legal U.S. workers," the DOJ said in a statement.

A complaint against iGate Mastech was filed by the Programmers Guild in 2006. It was one of dozens of complaints lodged by the Summit, N.J.-based organization against various companies.

John Miano, who founded the guild, said in a statement that the DOJ's announcement was "is probably the most visible result" of the guild's campaign against companies that discriminate against U.S. workers "in favor of cheap H-1B workers."

One job advertisement by iGate Mastech for a Java developer on Dice Holdings Inc.'s job board said "Only H-1s apply, and should be willing to transfer H-1B."

"The problem of companies only looking for H-1B workers is a serious one," said Miano. "We are only scratching the surface right now with the companies that are brazen enough to put out ads like these."

Grace Chung Becker, acting assistant attorney general for the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, said in a statement that the agency is "committed to protecting the right of all authorized workers in the U.S. against citizenship status discrimination."

The Office of Special Counsel for Immigration-Related Unfair Employment Practices (OSC) in the Civil Rights Division, which investigated the complaint, continues to monitor iGate to ensure compliance with the settlement agreement, the DOJ said.

From Workers Independent News (4/29/08) :

Do the competitive H1-B visas really bring the best and brightest to the United States? Jesse Russell reports:

The argument in favor of H1-B visas is that they bring needed skilled workers to the United States; however, a new study from the Center for Immigration Studies suggests that many of those who qualify for the work visas are simply "ordinary" workers. The report is called "H1-Bs: Still not The Best and the Brightest".It was authored by Norman Matloff, who says that his findings show "few of the foreign workers" are "at a level of real expertise whose description is associated with innovation". He said his findings also show that the majority meet the qualifications of "apprentice-like positions."

H1B

• Importing Workers For Pennies on the Dollar
• More H1B Visa abuse news
• Offshoring and H1B Visa abuse, the 1-2 punch to knockout US tech workers

Thanks to OhioChick at Democratic
Underground for spotting this

Building Bridges Radio: Colombian May Day brutality and West Coast dock shutdown

Colombian May Day Brutality and West Coast Docker workers shut down the ports

*Click above to listen to story

West Coast Ports

Tens of thousands of docks, members of the International Longshore & Warehouse Union shut down the west coast ports in a protest against the war. While an arbitrators decision prevented the ILWU from officially sponsoring the strike, its members turned out en masse. The stand-down at ports including Los Angeles and Long Beach, which handle 40% of the imported goods arriving in the United States each year idled ships and halted movement of about 10,000 containers during the eight-hour stoppage.

Colombian Workers Brutalized at May Day Protests

The Bush Administration continues to push through a new free trade agreement with Colombia despite its history of assassinations and repression of trade unionists. The Colombian government claims its fighting that violence, which it says is perpetuated by paramilitary organizations. However, when Building Bridges reporters called Colombia on May 1, 2008 to speak with Javier Correa, Pres. of the Sinaltrainal union we learned that more than one hundred workers at their May Day demonstrations had been arrested, many were beaten and some had been disappeared .

See the full description of the stories and learn more about Building Bridges Radio at UnionReview or at the Building Bridges website

Building Bridges is regularly broadcast live over WBAI, 99.5 FM in the N.Y.C Metropolitan area on Mondays from 7-8pm EST and is streamed, archived and pod cast at www.wbai.org, it is also broadcast nationally in many locations. For more information contact Ken Nash - knash@igc.org

NY: Congressman Vito J. Fossella arrested

A day he voted against the combustible dust standard, my Congressman, Vito Fosella has been arrested for DWI

From MyDD (5/1/08) :

From The Washington Post:

Rep. Vito J. Fossella (R-N.Y.) was arrested overnight in Alexandria and charged with driving while intoxicated, court records showed today.

Fossella is scheduled to appear in Alexandria General District Court on May 12 for an advisement hearing, the records said.

No other details were immediately available.

[...]

Fossella was elected to Congress in a special election to represent the 13th Congressional District of New York in November 1997, according to a biography on his Web site. The district includes Staten Island and the Bay Ridge, Dyker Heights, and the Bensonhurst and Gravesend neighborhoods of Brooklyn.

Being arrested for a DUI isn't necessarily a political death-knell for an incumbent -- but neither is it terribly good news, particularly when that incumbent is potentially vulnerable. Fossella won reelection in 2006 with about 57 percent of the vote, so he isn't necessarily in terrible shape coming into this election cycle. However, New York's 13th congressional district, which he represents, tends to lean about 1 point more Democratic than the nation as a whole in presidential elections, so this year being a presidential election year doesn't augur particularly well for Fossella's hopes. Throw in a DUI and this race may now be on the map.

At this point, there are a couple of Democrats looking at this race: 2006 nominee Steve Harrison and Brooklyn City Commissioner Domenic Recchia. Recchia, in particular, looks like a formidable candidate, having raised more than $350,000 to this point. In fact, Recchia has more in the bank than Fossella as of the last filing period. So definitely chalk this up as one to keep an eye on...

May 1st., 2003, mission accomplished, 5 years later West Coast dockworkers strike against war

Follow up to: West coast Longshoreman to strike against war as Iraq conflict costs hit 1/2 a trillion and more news you may have missed (3/08/08)

Five years ago this day, President Bush all dressed up for a party in his flight suit, landed in a jet onto the deck of an aircraft carrier, he then spoke before this very nation and the entire world under a banner that read "Mission Accomplished".

Today, 100% of people with a brain know that just isn't the case. on the west Coast the ILWU has struck the docks and paralyzed the coast, against arbitrator demands that they go to work. These fine men and women have had enough and proceeded with The West Coast dockworkers strike against the war.

the IRAQ WAR

500 Billion plus US dollars

4,000 plus Americans dead

Mission Accomplished, My ASS!

From ABC News

And for those who think it's quieted down, insurgents today dramatically reminded us that it is a long way from over. At least 35 people were killed, 76 wounded in a double suicide bombing north of Baghdad. It was a brutal assault - the first bomber, a woman, blew herself up in a crowded market in a Shiite town. Then, as security forces began dealing with the carnage, a second bomber blew himself up.

From LAList

All West Coast Ports Closed for May Day Strike

Security personnel place warning cones in front of the closed gates at the entrance to the Port of Los Angeles. West Coast cargo traffic has come to a halt as port workers stage anti-war protests to commemorate May Day. (AP Photo/Nick Ut)

In the name of ending the war, all 29 ports along the West Coast, including Los Angeles and Long Beach, have halted operations for one shift. "We are supporting the troops and telling politicians in Washington that it's time to end the war in Iraq," dockworkers' union president Bob McEllrath said in a press release.

Two years ago today, a similar protest happened when thousands of truck drivers stayed away to participate in "Day Without Immigrants." This year, the truckers are being turned away from the gates of ports until they can return later this evening when the 6:00 p.m. shift begins.

Today also "serves as a reminder of the 2002 dispute between the maritime association and the dockworkers that paralyzed West Coast ports for 10 days," noted the LA Times.

Correction: Top labor leader in Honduras killed, yeah just the place for more Free trade

Some say it was a robbery attempt gone astray, while some believe it was premeditated. From Reuters (4/42/08) :

EGUCIGALPA, April 24 (Reuters) - Masked gunmen killed the leader of Honduras' largest union group in an attack authorities said was a robbery attempt, but fellow unionists said she was targeted because of her job.

Rosa Fuentes, the head of the country's largest labor federation, was shot late on Wednesday after a carful of six armed men wearing ski-masks smashed into the back of her car, police spokesman Hector Mejia told Reuters.

Fuentes and the driver of the car died at the scene and another union leader died en route to the hospital.

Police said the attack was an attempted robbery by gang members. The attackers fled when another car pulled up, leaving without some $4,000 Fuentes had with her.

But fellow union members said Fuentes, whose CTH federation groups manufacturing unions with banana workers and civil servants, was killed because of her work.

"This was done by enemies of the labor movement, by hired killers," said Rigoberto Duron, No. 2 at the CTH.

Honduras is part of a regional free trade deal with the United States that has been criticized for its lax labor controls in Central American countries.

In neighboring Guatemala, five labor leaders were murdered last year. That case prompted the AFL-CIO labor federation to file a complaint with the U.S. labor department saying the government had failed to seriously investigate, violating provisions of the trade pact.

The Bush administration has been pushing Congress in recent days to approve a free trade agreement with Colombia. U.S. labor groups oppose the pact, saying Bogota has done too little to curb violence against trade union members. (Reporting by Gustavo Palencia; Writing by Mica Rosenberg, editing by Patricia Zengerle)

Big thanks to Omaha Steve at Democratic Underground for the story and Jimbo638 for the correction.

Politics, Labor, the SSP, oil, starvation, corporate greed

Excerpts from the RSS feed of The Man Common

• AFL-CIO: CEOs' Pay Packages Played Role In Mortgage Crisis (4/1408) - CNN/Money

WASHINGTON -(Dow Jones)- Labor union officials, who blame the nation's mortgage mess in part on runaway executive pay, are calling for Congress to adopt a "say on pay" bill that would let shareholders weigh in on CEO compensation.

Chief executives at Countrywide Financial (CFC) and Washington Mutual Inc. ( WM) were paid "obscene amounts" even when their company's performance faltered as subprime borrowers defaulted on home mortgage loans, AFL-CIO Secretary- Treasurer Richard Trumka said at a press briefing Monday. The bad loans devalued mortgage-backed securities tied to them, leading to large write-downs in assets at a number of financial firms..

Countrywide Chief Executive Angelo Mozilo, Washington Mutual CEO Kerry Killinger, former Bear Stearns Cos. (BSC) CEO James Cayne, and former Citigroup Inc. (C) CEO Charles Prince were among those rewarded lavishly for betting on risky loans, according to labor officials. Mozilo and Cayne are also chairmen.

"When the house of cards fell, they didn't pay for it, we did," said Trumka.

• Elections in America: Millionaires Accusing Each Other of Elitism (4/14/08) - AlterNet :

But is Barack Obama really an elitist as his opponents claim? Well of course he is -- he's running for president of the United States! He wouldn't have gotten this far in life if he'd spent the past 20 years driving a truck or moonlighting as a fry cook at Arby's. Like every other successful politician in the United States, Obama is a member of America's political ruling class, which means that like every other presidential candidate in recent memory, he is typically insulated from the lives of ordinary people. Does Obama really have any idea what it's like to live like a "Real American?" Of course he doesn't, and neither do John McCain and Hillary Clinton! Does any rational person out there believe that Obama, Clinton and McCain spend their free time away from the campaign trail hanging out at Jimmy Ray's Chicken'n'Beer Depot playing darts with the common folk?

In theory, this point should be fairly obvious. Even before getting elected, most politicians made a good deal of money in their careers as lawyers, doctors, actors or oil tycoons -- you know, real salt-of-the-earth sort of work. But for reasons that have long confounded sane people everywhere, our national millionaire press corps gives positive coverage to political candidates who are the most adept at lying about their ability to connect with regular folks. And because it apparently takes too much work for our press corps to sift through the candidates' policy positions to figure out what each of them is actually offering blue-collar voters, we don't even get rational assessments of politicians' working-class cred. Instead, we get piles and piles of anecdotal evidence.

• Three Amigos Summit (4/15/08) - Foreign Policy In Focus (FPIF) :

President George W. Bush will soon host what has become an annual “Three Amigos Summit.” The leaders of Mexico, the United States, and Canada will be gathering in New Orleans on April 21 and 22. What do you suppose is on the agenda? A rational response to immigration, perhaps? A thoughtful renegotiation of the unpopular North American Free Trade Agreement? Lessons from Canada’s affordable medicines program?

No. No. And no. Rather than putting their heads together around pressing issues such as these, the three leaders will be advancing a so-called Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP). And while that may sound well and good, this initiative, begun in 2005, is unlikely to produce either security or prosperity. That’s because the partnership is only with big business.

The chief executives of Wal-Mart, Chevron, and 28 other large corporations are in on the closed-door negotiations, while members of Congress, journalists, and ordinary citizens are excluded. And the secrecy is not just around the presidential summits, but also the meetings of about 20 SPP working groups that carry on negotiations over the course of the year.

What’s on the table? Not much is public, but we do know that the executive powers of the three countries are hammering out regulatory changes that they claim do not require legislative approval. And given who’s in the room, it’s a safe bet that these changes will favor narrow corporate interests over the public good.

• Global hunger, corporate greed: When will enough be enough? (4/16/08) - The Jakarta Post
  

Media around the world are currently feeding off the increasing price of food everywhere. The World Bank chief has joined in with the prediction that starvation is a distinct possibility for many of the weaker nations, leading to political turmoil.

The Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) chief says only 14 percent of available water is used in Asia, 2 percent in Africa, with the rest flowing into the oceans each year. If this is the sorry state of affairs, what do our political leaders and their henchmen do at the office every day?

The instinctive urge to shoot the messenger is of course misdirected energy. But when you put the disparate pieces of our puzzling world on the table, the emerging picture is embarrassing indeed.

A kilogram of rice costs more than US$1 and a barrel of oil costs over $100. One influences the other. The subprime loan crisis will cost more than $1 trillion and the Iraq war will cost the United States alone as much as $3 trillion.

Different problem, same instinct. Many pundits will argue none of this has any connection to global hunger, as if these colossal costs aren't real and do not affect the common man.

It is all too easy to throw stones at our politicians and bureaucrats. But those of us in business would do well to spend a minute pondering the glass houses we go to work in.

The altar of the shareholder has become the convenient excuse for inexcusable conduct. The voracious appetite for dividends and stock prices has allowed CEOs to hold boards and investors alike to ransom.

Systemic deception has become acceptable culture in too many boardrooms, with nothing more than a wink and a nod required down the chain of command. When it gets to a point that an accountant is unable to explain complex new financial instruments and their equally befuddling acronyms, disaster cannot be far away.

Not even a decade ago, the Internet bubble exploded with disastrous consequences, ripples felt around the globe. Everybody who then believed the lessons were learned have been proven wrong not even a decade later. For every errant CEO who has gone to jail, there are hundreds who have made millions in severance pay alone. Regulators and lawmakers appear not to be troubled.

It seems as if the profit motive is no longer an adequate driver of business today. Unbridled greed has taken over, a global corporate culture spreading like a cancer unchecked.

• Big Tax Breaks for Businesses in Housing Bill (4/16/08) - NY Times

Washington - The Senate proclaimed a fierce bipartisan resolve two weeks ago to help American homeowners in danger of foreclosure. But while a bill that senators approved last week would take modest steps toward that goal, it would also provide billions of dollars in tax breaks - for automakers, airlines, alternative energy producers and other struggling industries, as well as home builders.

The tax provisions of the Foreclosure Prevention Act, which consumer groups and labor leaders say amount to government handouts to big business, show how the credit crisis, while rattling the housing and financial markets, has created beneficiaries in the power corridors of Washington.

It also shows how legislation with a populist imperative offers a chance for lobbyists to press their clients' interests.

This has proved especially true on the housing legislation, which many lawmakers and lobbyists view as one of the last opportunities before Congress grinds to a halt amid election-year politics.

In the Senate bill, the nation's biggest home builders, some now on the verge of bankruptcy, won a provision that would let them claim millions in tax refunds by charging their current losses against the huge profits they made three or four years ago. Other struggling industries would benefit from this provision.

"This is our biggest legislative effort since the Tax Reform Act of 1986," said Jerry M. Howard, chief executive of the National Association of Home Builders. Hundreds of the association's members flooded the district offices of representatives and senators while they were home for the spring recess last month.

Supporters of the bill, including Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana and the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, say it represents sound tax policy carefully focused to help stimulate the lagging economy. But the White House opposes the Senate bill, and Democratic leaders in the House not only have promised to provide more relief for individual homeowners, but have also dropped the corporate tax provisions from their version.

Downtrodden automakers - Ford and General Motors - were especially dogged in securing a tax break that would let them collect alternative minimum tax credits, also known as the A.M.T., that would otherwise be out of reach because they did not pay enough taxes in recent years to claim a rebate.

If the provision becomes law, it could mean checks up to $40 million for the car manufacturers, as long as the companies had made investments in plant or equipment in that amount.

A Ford spokesman, Mike Moran, said he was aware that Ford would benefit from the tax credit in the bill passed by the Senate. But Mr. Moran said that the credit applied to a range of industries, not just automakers. A General Motors spokesman could not be reached.

Domestic airlines and manufacturers other than automakers would be eligible to claim the A.M.T. break as well. One lobbyist said that the companies that had sought the tax breaks in meetings with lawmakers included Ford, General Motors, American Airlines, Northwest Airlines and Goodyear Tire and Rubber.

Companies could claim only one of the new tax breaks, which in all, are expected to cost $6 billion through 2018. The jockeying among industry groups, including Realtors, home builders and bankers, is certain to intensify in coming weeks as lawmakers move to reconcile the Senate bill with a more ambitious package of housing legislation now under way in the House.

• The End of the World as You Know It…and the Rise of the New Energy World Order (4/15/08) - TomDispatch.com

Take the food riots now spreading across the planet because the prices of staples are soaring, while stocks of basics are falling. In the last year, wheat (think flour) has risen by 130%, rice by 74%, soya by 87%, and corn by 31%, while there are now only eight to 12 weeks of cereal stocks left globally. Governments across the planetary map are shuddering. This is a fast growing horror story and, though the cry in the streets of Cairo and Port au Prince might be for bread, this, too, turns out to be a tale largely ruled by energy: Too many acres turned over to corn (and sugar cane) for the creation of biofuels; a historic drought in Australia and other climate-change-induced extremes of weather -- a result of the burning of fossil fuels -- that have affected crop yields; and many new middle-class consumers, in China and elsewhere, coming on line, with a growing desire for meat, the production of which is heavily petroleum based.

From resource wars to oil wars (the subjects of his last two books), Michael Klare, Tomdispatch's energy expert, has long been ahead of the curve when it came to ways in which our planet was being reshaped at the most basic level. Today, he offers Tomdispatch readers a peek into some of the key themes in his staggering new book, Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of Energy. If you want to grasp the true shape of our shaky world, of where exactly we've been and where we might be going, this is a book not to be missed. It offers the profile-in-formation of a shape-shifting planet, a planet in transition and on a road to nowhere pretty. Check out as well the latest Tomdispatch brief video (produced by TD's Brett Story) -- in which Klare discusses key issues in his new book -- by clicking here. Tom

• Are Americans unusually stupid or is it something our president put in the water? (4/15/08) - TruthDig

By so unabashedly embracing the most glaringly failed U.S. president ever, McCain has surrendered the right to be considered an independent candidate, judged on his own merits and personal history. A vote for McCain is a vote for that rancid recipe mixing religious bigotry, imperial arrogance and corporate greed that he had stood against in the run-up to the 2000 presidential election when he challenged George W. Bush, but to which he now has capitulated.

Too harsh? Then consider just how tight the space is between the rocks of our failed Mideast policy and the hard place of our impending financial disaster. The sudden out-of-control spike in the cost of oil—the key short-term market variable, the specter that stokes inflation fear and limits moves to avoid recession—is not a natural disaster or in any realistic way the result of inefficiency in the use of energy. What more than doubled the price of petroleum in the short run was not that too many of us bought Hummers, but rather that the political stability of the region that contains the bulk of that oil was deliberately and recklessly roiled.

In the name of fighting the 9/11 terrorists, the Bush administration overthrew the one Arab government most adamantly opposed to the Saudi financiers of that son of their system, Osama bin Laden. Instead of confronting the royal leaders of a kingdom that supplied 15 of the 19 hijackers, we invaded a nation that supplied not a single one. While Bush overthrew Saddam Hussein, who had no ties to the hijackers, he embraced the leaders of Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, the only three nations in the world that had diplomatically recognized and supported the Taliban sponsors of al-Qaida.

Consider that historical marker at a time when the UAE and Saudi Arabia bankers are buying major positions in distressed U.S. financial and other key corporate institutions. I know, it all sounds too conspiratorial, like imagining that we might wake up from this national nightmare and discover that the CEO of Halliburton, who replaced Dick Cheney when the latter selected himself to be Bush’s vice president, now has his headquarters in Dubai, tucked safely into the obscenely oil-revenue-rich UAE that our troops were sent to Iraq to protect.

There is no national outrage, or even seriously sustained media interest, over the fact that Cheney’s old company profited enormously from ripping off U.S. tax dollars going into the Iraq occupation. Nor is there even much curiosity about the shenanigans of Halliburton, which is doing business with Arab oil sheiks at a time when the U.S. banks these Middle Eastern oil interests bought into are moving to foreclose on American homeowners.

It’s just the sort of egregious betrayal of the trust of the taxpayers that Sen. McCain would have gone after, before he sought to don the soiled robes of the Bush presidency.

• Biofuel: the burning question (4/15/08) - The Independent

Graham Wynne, chief executive of the RSPB, said: "The volume of biofuel that can be genuinely described as sustainable is at present very small indeed and is nowhere near enough to warrant the 2.5 per cent obligation. The impacts of biofuel production on forests and wetlands are already being seen worldwide. It is a tragedy that customers' money is going to be spent on driving this destruction."

The World Bank and the UN have, in recent days, expressed concern about the impact of biofuels on world food prices, sparking riots from Haiti to the Philippines. Gordon Brown, who has put the issue on the agenda at the forthcoming G8 summit, has also voiced concerns at EU level about deforestation and loss of habitats caused by biofuel production. And Alistair Darling, the Chancellor, raised the issue at the weekend's G7 meeting in Washington.

Bitter?

This is a great post over at the "Silenced Majority Portal: for Informed comment, political humor, and the pursuit of fun." blog

Bitter
Nothing in US History would have EVER changed if people had not been embittered, angry, upset & outraged at the status quo.

No Declaration of Independence.
Think the colonists weren't royally pissed off at the British and King George III? After the first couple of flowery paragraphs it's basically a long list of gripes & grievances against ol' Georgy Boy.

No Abolitionist Movement.
Think Frederick Douglass & William Lloyd Garrison & Wendell Phillips & John Brown were not OUTRAGED at the horrors & brutality of slavery?

No Emancipation of Slaves.
Think slaves just accepted their lot? In fact it wasn't Lincoln or the 13th Amendment - it was the slaves who freed the slaves (see Eric Foner, Ira Berlin, etc).

No Populist Movement.
Google "1892 Populist Party Platform" for some wonderful rhetoric of outrage!

No Progressive Movement.
Think Upton Sinclair was not outraged? Jane Addams? Emma Goldman?

No Labor Movement.
Think working people gracefully accepted being ground into the dust by the bosses every day of their lives?

No Vote for Women.
Think women were not embittered by their exclusion from the nation's political life?

No New Deal.
Think people weren't royally pissed off during the catastrophe of the Great Depression?

No Civil Rights Movement.
Think MLK was a "dreamer"? That SNCC came out of complacency with Jim Crow? The whole thing was born of nothing more than anger, outrage, embitterment, and HOPE.

No Vote for Black People.
Think it was white people's generosity of spirit that extended the right to vote to African Americans?

No Environmental Movement.
Think environmentalism emerged as a full-blown social movement from the 1970s to the present because people were not incensed about all the crud in the water, air, and earth?
(image from OPOL; message from Docudharma/link to be added)

Republicrats! My new tag

needed to try out the new tag, Republicrats, and in doing so,
found a rather cool Blog, Politics in the Zeros, with this image



From

Free Trade's working victims #2, Haiti's Government fall's after people cannot afford to eat

"per capita income is just $480 a year"

Is Free Trade a Good Thing for Haiti? Deforested lands, farmers forced out to make "Free Trade" zones, no self-sufficiency, no sustainable agriculture, dependence on imports and a population growth that is estimated at 110% higher than world average and 174% higher than the United States.

Drastic food inflation causes riots

Amid riots and death's, UN forces, led by Brazilian peacekeeping forces and humanitarian food aid, Haiti has overthrow it's leader, in a country where most of it's workers make less than $2 a day. It's a simple fact, with worldwide food inflation, the people in Haiti cannot afford to eat.

When you wonder why we as labor should care, take note that many former US employers in the textile industry have opened up shop in this land, and many in Haiti itself, shut their doors when human rights organizations persisted in campaigns for these workers. These companies who contracted clothing for the likes of Nike and Disney, shut their Haitian factories and headed to countries with even lower regard for labor and human rights, such as China.

Read on and get an idea of the wonderful world of "Free Trade" and "Global" economy

Haiti Tosses Out It's Leader After Promise of Sustainable Agriculture on Barren Land

From Reuters (4/12/08):

PORT-AU-PRINCE (Reuters) - Haiti's government fell on Saturday when senators fired the prime minister after more than a week of riots over food prices, ignoring a plan presented by the president to slash the cost of rice.
(continued)
The clash with senators came after the president of the country of 9 million people -- most of whom earn less than $2 a day -- managed to persuade rioters to end a week of violence in which at least five people were killed.

Stone-throwing crowds began battling U.N. peacekeepers and Haitian police in the south on April 2, enraged at the soaring cost of rice, beans, cooking oil and other staples.

The unrest spread this week to the capital, Port-au-Prince, bringing the sprawling and chaotic city to a halt as mobs took over the streets, smashing windows, looting shops, setting fire to cars and hurling rocks at motorists.

The Corporate Hands In Haiti

While in the late 90's Disney and Nike clothing contractor H.H. Cutler (a division of VF Corporation, one of the world's largest apparel companies), moved from Haiti to places in the world with even less human rights and lower pay, in the years since American companies such as Levi's have closed the doors here in the states and opened shop in the country. Workers in the country earn an average of less than $2 a day. A Cintas subcontractor, Haitian American Apparel Co. S.A. (or as workers call it, HAACOSA), has been alleged to have "Severe violation of Haitian Labor Codes and International Labor Standards", from the last link below:

"They lock the gates on us and sometimes put security guards out in front with rifles to prevent us from leaving, said Jacqueline, as she described the method her employer uses to force workers to work over 10 hours a day without compensation. The supervisors would yell and curse at us to finish our quota. My daily quota is sewing 90 dozen zippers on pants for 80 gourds (~$2 USD)."

The factory gets so hot it is like working in fire. Inside the air is so hot and full of dust that I can’t breathe, so I would put my handkerchief around my nose and continue working, she said. HAACOSA doe not have any purified water for us to drink. Instead, there is a tub of water that, I think, is rainwater or something because it is smelly and dirty. I think supervisors pee in the water because it smells so bad. When asked if she drinks the water, she responded, I have to, I don’t have money to buy water.

Life In Our Free Trade Neighbor


From The Associated Press (4/12/08) :

Globally, food prices have risen 40 percent since mid-2007. Haiti, where most people live on less than $2 a day, is particularly affected because it imports nearly all of its food, including more than 80 percent of its rice.

Much of Haiti's once-productive farmland has been abandoned as farmers struggle to grow crops in soil decimated by erosion, deforestation, flooding and tropical storms. To make a profit, the farms that remain often price their crops sharply higher than imported American products, which benefit from generous U.S. government subsidies.

Some aid was on its way Friday. Brazil, which has about 1,200 peacekeepers serving in Haiti, sent an air force plane with 14 tons of food, including beans, sugar and cooking oil. France pledged food and other aid worth $1.6 million. The U.N. World Food Program, which had collected only 15 percent of its Haiti budget before the riots, appealed for donations to meet its $96 million goal.

But the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization said Friday that high food prices in the developing world are unlikely to subside anytime soon as price speculation and market failures counteract increases in food production.

This spells disaster in a nation where the World Bank says per capita income is just $480 a year.

Francois, gaunt and balding at 32, doesn't even have that much. Hired as a "transportation inspector" last year by the mayor of the nearby Cite Soleil slum, he has no salary — just an identification card that can be used in the slums to exact bribes or collect fees. His 25-year-old girlfriend also does not work. With no education or skills, their job prospects aren't good in a place where most eligible adults are unemployed.

Mostly, Francois depends on handouts from neighbors and friends. He begs in the street. If all else fails, he hunts for scraps in the garbage piles at the nearby La Saline market, in view of towering stacks of U.S.-produced rice he cannot afford.

Francois and Joseph weren't impressed by the much-anticipated national address of President Rene Preval on Wednesday, delivered as gunshots rang through the capital and protesters yelled for his resignation.

The U.S.-backed leader blamed soaring food costs on Haiti's dependence on foreign imports and a badly damaged infrastructure that makes shipping difficult. A trained agronomist, Preval also pledged to build up Haitian agriculture and make the country more self-sufficient, offering government loans to help farmers afford fertilizer.

His message was lost on this couple. Like thousands of urban poor in the capital, they fled the hopelessness of the countryside in their youth. At age 10, Francois was given away by his rural parents to a family in Port-au-Prince, who forced him to work as a servant until he turned 18.

For them, promises to grow more food in the increasingly barren countryside are meaningless.

"By the time rice grows here, we'll all be dead," Francois said. "Preval is a country man. He should go plant rice."

In Haitian slang, Francois and Joseph describe their hunger pangs as "eating Clorox" because of the burning sensation in their guts. Flashing a sheepish smile, Joseph said they sometimes resort to a traditional hunger palliative — cookies made of dirt, salt and butter.

More People and No Sustainable Agriculture

One of the biggest problem in Haiti is that most of it's food is imported, most of it's own farmers have, been run off their land for "Free Trade" areas or have abandoned their farms due to much cheaper US Subsidized Agriculture, another major player is the population growth figures, Haiti has had an increase of 2.45% in 2007, thats more than twice as high as the world average, and almost triple that of the United States. Obviously unaffordable food and more people is a deadly mix.

Heres the stats on Haiti,

The following diagram shows the levels of exports and imports of the country over the years.



The country became a member of the World Bank in the year 1953. The country is also a member of the trade organizations like WTO and CARICOM.

From CIA.gov

World

Population growth rate:	1.167% (2007 est.)
Birth rate:	20.09 births/1,000 population (2007 est.)
Death rate:	8.37 deaths/1,000 population (2007 est.)

United States

Population growth rate:	0.894% (2007 est.)
Birth rate:	14.16 births/1,000 population (2007 est.)
Death rate:	8.26 deaths/1,000 population (2007 est.)

Haiti

Population growth rate:	2.453% (2007 est.)
Birth rate:	35.87 births/1,000 population (2007 est.)
Death rate:	10.4 deaths/1,000 population (2007 est.)

In Conclusion

My quick conclusion, not being the expert on Foreign affairs and this travesty in Haiti, more education and less population growth would be a good start. Any true trade pact should have this type of thing involved in it, we simply cannot just rape a country dry without helping the people create their own sustainable environment, so, is Free Trade a good thing? When people come somewhere closer to the top, with actual human rights, with regulated monitoring. With Corporate investment into the communities they invade. Will that happen? I really don't know, in this world where you need consumers, it seems that the corps are killing their own businesses. Constantly fretting on this quarters bottom line and not foreseeing past that, the entire corporate structure is flawed in it's methods. When there were businessmen who wanted to achieve their dreams of highly sought after products, and the leading products in their respective fields amidst competition, they looked past a 3 month span. They invested in the future of their companies. In todays world we have a few CEO and board members who look to get the highest bonus and pay in very small sections of time. It's a losing proposition. Especially when no one can afford their products. Biofeul's using the food supply is a huge contributer to the food demand, but then again theres another story for another day...

Also read Part 1: "Free Trade's working victims, Bangladesh's workers cannot afford rice, John McCain on free trade"

Also: "The cost of food: facts and figures"

More links of Corporations in Haiti From Hartford Web Publishing

Disney/Nike Contractor Leaves Haiti for China

Campaign for Labor Rights, Action Alert, 8 August 1998. H.H. Cutler is planning to pull production out of Haiti to relocate to China. More than 2,000 badly needed jobs in Haiti could be lost. H.H. Cutler (a division of VF Corporation, one of the world's largest apparel companies) has sewn clothing in Haiti for the last several years under contract with the Walt Disney Company and Nike.

Disney/Haiti workers threatened

Labor Alerts, 26 October 1998. Concerning the Megatex factory in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, which produces clothing for the Disney company. The worker organization, Batay Ouvriye, reports that a factory supervicor threatened two union members at Megatex with firing and violence.

No work at Megatex; no answer from Disney

Campaign for Labor Rights, Labor Alerts, 16 May 1999. Megatex, a factory in Port-au-Prince which manufacturers clothing for Disney and other brands and which has been the focus of several previous labor alerts. The entire export production sector is spiraling down. Foreign capital is deserting the country. The company remains silent.

Haiti private sector decries ‘climate of terror’

By Michael Deibert, Reuters, 24 November 2002. In another blow to embattled President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Haiti's largest private sector association blamed high authoritiesclimate of terror. The business group calls for the arrests of some government supporters. for allowing a

Betting on its brand name, Hilton sees a future in Haiti: Poor economy, protests fail to dim chain's vision

By Marika Lynch, The Miami Herald, Friday 20 December 2002. The walls are to be 15 feet tall in the planned Hilton D'Haiti in Port-au-Prince. The 196-unit, $52.5 million complex is shooting for a 2005 opening. The Hilton D'Haiti hopes to attract business people seeking to slip into the country and avoid the trek—and the safety risks—of heading downtown.

Farmers forced out as global brands build Haiti free-trade area

By Jacqui Goddard, Ouanaminthe, Haiti, The Sunday Times, 6 July 2003. The Maribahoux Plain is one of Haiti's most fertile agricultural regions. Located on Haiti's border with the Dominican Republic, it has a production capacity enough to feed half a million people. But under a scheme funded by the World Bank, 54 peasant farmers have been evicted to free up land for an industrial Free Trade Zone (FTZ).

Levi Strauss moving to Haiti; N. American plants closing in March

By Don Thomas, The Edmonton Journal, Saturday 4 October 2003. Levi Strauss closing its North American plants and ramping up production in Third World countries, including Haiti, the poorest nation in the western hemisphere. With help from the World Bank, Grupo M, the Dominican Republic's largest employer, has opened a plant in a free trade zone in nearby Haiti.

Labor Abuses At CINTAS Producing Factory in Haiti

UNITE, [21] October 2003. The working conditions of the women garment workers at a Cintas subcontractor, Haitian American Apparel Co. S.A. (or as workers call it, HAACOSA). Severe violation of Haitian Labor Codes and International Labor Standards, as well as Cintas' own Code of Conduct.